Feed The Fear

Tag Archives: Short stories

Issue Five’s Women in Horror…

Miranda Freeman – If You Believe It’s Real

Miranda Freeman writes short stories, novels, and odes to her miniature Australian Shepherd. She earned her B.A. in Linguistics and English from UCLA in 2012, and now attends graduate school in Boston. When she’s not writing or taking personal offence at the barbaric East Coast winters, she enjoys conquering crossword puzzles and abusing her Keurig privileges.

Laura A. Lord – To Procure A Break-up

Laura A. Lord is the author of numerous volumes of vignettes and poetry, including her newest collection, Perjury. Lord’s work focuses on picking out the smallest of moments and bringing them out with starling clarity and poignant imagery. She is the editor of the poetry publication, The Reverie. Her work has been featured in The Collegian, The Beacon, Whirl with Words, and Precipice.

Stephanie Smith – Deliverance

Stephanie Smith has been a writer of the dark and surreal for 20 years, beginning with poetry, and, in most recent years, branching out into fiction. She has completed her first novella, Shade, and has begun work on a new book.

Outside of writing, Stephanie enjoys watching horror movies and devouring books. She is an avid fan of Star Trek, Monty Python, Cirque du Soleil, and Clive Barker. A self-proclaimed autodidact, she dreams of appearing on Jeopardy one day.

Mandi S. Lockley – The Box

Mandi S. Lockley lives in London with her husband and two cats. She grew up in the foggy, post-industrial English Midlands where she watched too many scary movies from behind a cushion and slept with the light on. Nowadays she spends much of her spare time watching horror films in the dark and reading and writing genre fiction. She has also written extensively on the fascinating but contentious subject of astrology and has been published online, in e-book format and in journals and magazines and has even written about the astrology of horror. The Box is her first published work of fiction.

Issue Three of Massacre magazine featured the following great writers:

Anya J. Davis – Crow Bait

Anya J. Davis is a freelance copywriter and editor by day, spending her most of her time lost in a world of product descriptions and blog posts or growling about misused apostrophes. When darkness falls, she can be found sipping a glass of wine, listening to Skinny Puppy and Fields of the Nephilim, and writing tales of terror in a vain attempt at therapy to cure herself of her nightmares.

A graduate of the Open University, with a BA (Hons.) in Humanities including Literature, Anya lives in Devon, in the South West of England.

Anya is currently working on a collection of short horror stories and a novel.

Stephanie Ellis – One Way

Stephanie Ellis is currently a Teaching Assistant in a Southampton secondary school but previously worked for many years as a technical author. Her short stories, firmly based in the horror genre, have found success with a variety of publishers and over the coming year will be found in the Fringeworks anthologies – Raus! Untoten!, Last Diner, Deadman’s Tales and Cadavers as well as the future Distorted Perceptions anthology by Death Throes Publishing.
She also dabbles in poetry (printed in local and national press) and has recently distorted a number of favourite childhood nursery rhymes into something darker and more sinister, these can be found on her own website.
Her own taste in reading varies widely from Terry Pratchett, to Bernard Cornwell to current favourite Neil Gaiman – and oh yes, Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe also get a look in.

And from Issue Four…

Rose Blackthorn – We Were Wolves

Rose Blackthorn lives in the high mountain desert of Eastern Utah with her boyfriend and two dogs, Boo and Shadow. She spends her time writing, reading, being crafty, and photographing the surrounding wilderness. An only child, she was lucky to have a mother who loved books, and has been surrounded by them her entire life. Thus instead of squabbling with siblings, she learned to be friends with her imagination and the voices in her head are still very much present.
She is a member of the HWA and has been published online and in print with Necon E-Books, Stupefying Stories, Buzzy Mag, Interstellar Fiction, SpeckLit, Jamais Vu and the anthologies The Ghost IS the Machine, A Quick Bite of Flesh, Fear the Abyss, The Best of the Horror Society 2013, Enter at Your Own Risk: The End is the Beginning, FEAR: Of the Dark and Equilibrium Overturned, among others.

Alexandra Niculae – Survivor

Alexandra Niculae – or “Dodo” as most people know her (no connection to the prehistoric feathered dinosaur whatsoever) – is a Romanian writer of haunting horror, fearsome fantasy and scary SF tales. She doesn’t shy away from the occasional venomous verse and has a knack for awesome alliterations.

She is a rapacious reader and thinks that the more books one devours, the more difficult it is to fabricate fresh fiction, as there are countless creative cerebrums out there. Nevertheless, as Stephen King says, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

The 1972 movie “Horror Express” sparked Dodo’s love for all things thrilling and the fact that she comes from the land of the dashing, dazzling, deeply desirable Dracula worked in her favour as well. In her free time she enjoys a game of Scrabble, taking pictures of buildings in ruin and vividly visualizing venturesome vampires.

Highlighting Massacre Magazine’s Women in Horror

Issue Two of Massacre Magazine featured these talented writers:

Nicole Starbuck – Do You Know Who I Am?

Nicole Starbuck started scribbling as an infant and hasn’t stopped since. After receiving her BFA in Studio Art from the University of Arizona, she gathered her snow gear and settled in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies. She splits her time between vendor relations and writing her heart out. She’s deeply fascinated by the inner workings of the human mind and is often caught contemplating the emotional significance of even the most mundane experiences. When she’s not working her retail magic, writing short stories, or prepping her three novels for publication, she enjoys curling up on the couch with her husband, two cats, and a large bowl of popcorn.

J. Kimber – Hurt

J. Kimber’s fiction has appeared in several anthologies and her passions are curling up with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Paul Auster, Edgar Allen Poe or Stephen King. She is currently studying for a degree in Humanities, lives in London, misses the sea and likes getting lost in the woods.

Stephanie Ellis – The Gorgon’s Kiss

Stephanie Ellis is currently a Teaching Assistant in a Southampton secondary school but previously worked for many years as a technical author. Her short stories, firmly based in the horror genre, have found success with a variety of publishers and over the coming year will be found in the Fringeworks anthologies – Raus! Untoten!, Last Diner, Deadman’s Tales and Cadavers as well as the future Distorted Perceptions anthology by Death Throes Publishing.
She also dabbles in poetry (printed in local and national press) and has recently distorted a number of favourite childhood nursery rhymes into something darker and more sinister, these can be found on her own website.
Her own taste in reading varies widely from Terry Pratchett, to Bernard Cornwell to current favourite Neil Gaiman – and oh yes, Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe also get a look in.

During February we will be highlighting Massacre Magazine’s Women in Horror

Issue One of Massacre Magazine featured these talented writers:

Tracy Kuhn – Horror is for Boys…

Tracy Kuhn is a freelance writer and editor who lives in York, England, with her husband and two daughters. She’s always written short stories and gets her inspiration from being generally nosey. She only recently came out as a fiction writer and has had several short stories published under a pen name, in a variety of magazines. She has a flash fiction story in an anthology and has had several stories published by Ether Books.
She has also had several pieces of non-fiction published. She has recently found herself in the world of YA horror after re-discovering her cache of horror novels from her teens, and is currently halfway through her first novel.
She spends far too much time on Twitter and Facebook and recently started a blog which is supposed to be about writing, but usually ends up a little bit ranty.

Dana Wright – Demon Darkling

Dana has always had a fascination with things that go bump in the night. It began with two cut out Halloween decorations of Dracula and his Bride that she kept up year round, much to the concern of her parents. Writing and reading have always been her passion. She is often found playing at the local bookstore where she works as a manager. In her off hours, she tries not to maim herself with crochet hooks or knitting needles, watching scary monster movies with her husband and furry kids or blogging about books. More commonly, she is chained to her computers, writing like a woman possessed. Coffee and chocolate at the ready, she loves to read and is pretty sure her to be read pile will one day crush her in her sleep. She is currently working on two young adult fiction novels and a menagerie of horror stories.

Julia Kavan – Safe Harbour

Born in the University city of Cambridge, England, Julia has spent most of her life living in Cambridgeshire – atmospheric and the perfect inspiration for ghost stories.
She loves exploring the darker side of human nature, writing psycho-sexual and psychological thrillers, horror and supernatural mysteries.
She finds inspiration in the British landscape, art, photography and music. When she isn’t writing you can find her rambling (or tripping over) in forests or being crushed against the barriers at a rock gig – she loves the great outdoors and deafening music equally (and has a death wish…really, she’s too old for gigs).
She has also taught creative writing classes for over ten years, whilst writing screenplays, tackling novels and experimenting with short stories.